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ITALIAN AMERICAN FEMALE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Marta Piroli the Central Point of This Thesis Is the Recogniti

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ITALIAN AMERICAN FEMALE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Marta Piroli the Central Point of This Thesis Is the Recogniti ABSTRACT FINDING VOICES: ITALIAN AMERICAN FEMALE AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Marta Piroli The central point of this thesis is the recognition and exploration of the tradition of female Italian American autobiography, focusing on the choice of some Italian American writers to camouflage their Italian background and change their name. The thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter explores a brief history of Italian migration in America during the nineteenth century. The second part of this chapter provides a literary discussion about the most important autobiographical theories over the twentieth century, focusing on the female self. The second chapter explores the role of Italian woman in Italian culture, and the first steps of emancipation of the children of the Italian immigrants. The third chapter will offer an approach to autobiography as a genre for expressing one’s self. The final chapter provides an analysis of significant Italian American women writers and their personal search for identity. FINDING VOICES: ITALIAN AMERICAN FEMALE AUTOBIOGRAPHY A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English by Marta Piroli Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2006 Advisor____________________________ Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis Reader_____________________________ Cheryl Heckler Reader_____________________________ Sante Matteo CONTENTS Chapter I: Italian Immigration An Overview 1 1. Italian Migration in America 2 2. Claiming an Italian American Tradition 8 3. Claiming a Theoretical Tradition: Ego Psychology 10 4. The Language of the Subject 13 5. Contextualizing the Subject 14 6. Multiple Subjects: Race and Ethnicity 15 7. Conclusion 17 Chapter II: Italian Life in America 18 Chapter III: Autobiography As Exploration of The Self 31 8. The Traditional Canon of Autobiography 31 9. Female Autobiography 34 10. Italian American Female Tradition 36 11. Italian American Female Autobiography 41 Chapter IV: “I Have Found My Voice” 47 12. Blandina Segale 48 13. Grazia Deledda 52 14. Rosa Cassettari 56 15. Francesca Vinciguerra 63 16. Crypto – Ethnicity 65 17. Maria Mazziotti Gillan 68 18. Maria Mazziotti Gillan: Where I Come From 69 Bibliography 81 CHAPTER I: ITALIAN IMMIGRATION, AN OVERVIEW On March 14, 1993, the New York Times Book Review published on the front page Gay Talese’s article “Where Are The Italian American Novelists?”. This article brought attention to the possibilities that there could be a distinct Italian American literary tradition, the study of which has been neglected and dismissed. Within this tradition, Italian American women expressed their life stories, but narrow cultural definitions of women’s roles made their writing marginal. The central point of this thesis is the recognition and exploration of the tradition of female Italian American autobiography, focusing on the choice, or necessity, of some Italian American writers to camouflage their Italian backgrounds and, in some instances, to change their names. In spite of a former lack of acknowledgement of the value of women’s autobiography in Italian American literature, the Italian American woman writer, suspended between two worlds very different from each other, has been caught in the bind of defining herself and finding her place and role, and establishing a balance between her Italian past and American present. Coming from an Italian society characterized by poverty and deprivation, and a total denial of personal freedom, many Italian American women writers used autobiography as a means of exploring self expression in writing. As pointed out by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson in Women, Autobiography, Theory–A Reader, the practice of constructing an autobiography is a very effective tool for documenting one’s own life experiences, and understanding one’s own identity. In particular, Italian American women writers used this literary strategy to unite the different pieces and parts of their bicultural life into a balanced self. The real and significant literary contribution of Italian culture to American literature came from the children of the first immigrants, in their need to establish their identities suspended between two worlds, and to recover their tradition. In this first chapter I explore a brief history of Italian migration in America in a period covering the years 1875 – 1915. This historical excursus will be helpful in giving a temporal and sociological placement of Italian migration in the United 1 States and in understanding the contact between Italian and American worlds. The second part of the first chapter provides a literary review of some of the most important autobiographical theories that focus on the female self. The second chapter will explore Italian life in America during the twentieth century. Particular attention is devoted to the role of the Italian woman in Italian culture but also to the first steps of emancipation and independence of the children of the immigrants. The third chapter will offer a theoretical approach to autobiography as a privileged genre for expressing one’s self, and a discussion about the consolidation and acknowledgement of the Italian American female tradition. The fourth chapter provides a concrete analysis of Italian American autobiographies and the personal search for identity. Italian Migration in America According to the U.S. Census Bureau1 in 2000 almost sixteen million Americans declared Italian roots. This significant fact is due to the migration of six million Italian people from Italy to America between 1815 and 1915. The migration of Italians from their villages in Italy, more than a century ago, has no parallel in history. Out of a population of fourteen million southern Italians, an estimated five million left by the outbreak of World War I, in the largest exodus of a single ethnic group to the United States. Most of the immigrants came to the United States during "the great migration,"2 between 1880 and 1922, in search of opportunity and personal improvement denied in their homeland. During the first fifteen years of the twentieth century, the Italian immigration had its peak: three and a half million Italian people arrived in the U.S. Obviously any generalization about Italian immigrants can give only a superficial description and idea of this complex social phenomenon, but it is possible to outline some general aspects and features of the Italian migration. Andrew Rolle, in The Italian Americans–Troubled Roots3, and 1. U.S. Census Bureau, American Fact Finder, QT – 02 Profile of Selected Social Characteristics 2000. 2. According to the Immigration History Reseach Center directed by Rudolph Vecoli, the migration of Italian people in the United States between the nineteenth and twentieth century has this name in consideration of the massive and extraordinary number of people forming the migrating wave, approximately six million Italian people. 3. Andrew Rolle, The Italian Americans – Troubled Roots (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.), 1980. 2 Rudolph J. Vecoli, in Storia dell’Emigrazione Italiana4 (History of the Italian Immigration), depicted southern Italy as a peasant society characterized by intolerable conditions, a narrow and rigid culture where people, in the attempt to build their lives and aspirations, were forced to struggle with poverty, ignorance, oppression, insecurity and lack of opportunity. Social, political and economic depression was crystallized in a system administered by the leading class–the aristocracy-who blocked progress because they were too scared by the prospect of change and loss of privileges. Farmers were used working their entire lives for absentee and incompetent landlords not interested in the progress and modernization of their estates. Illiteracy, poverty, famine, the vastness of latifondo–the typical southern estate of the aristocracy–the inclemency of the natural elements and malaria were a strident contrast with the glory of the Renaissance or what was conveniently called Italian culture. In fact, what is traditionally and commonly linked to Italian culture is not always an exact representation of the lives of many Italian people. Unfortunately lack of education and of decent living conditions were the reality that urged a consistent part of the Italian population to migrate to the United States. Andrew Rolle points out that many negative elements produced an inevitable distrust in the social system, and the consequent necessity to escape from it “Disease, hunger, epidemics, and political corruption had darkened the life of too many young peasants. Their exploitation by absentee landlords and avaricious merchants produced a wage system that was scandalous, even by European standard.”5 The majority of the Italian immigrants looked at the American shores as a mythical and magnificent alternative to despair and poverty, and in Italy, more than in other European countries, this myth stood out over the rest. To the Italian immigrant America first existed as a metaphor and there was virtually no distinction between North and South America. America meant going west across the ocean where work 4. Rudolph J. Vecoli, Storia dell’Emigrazione Italiana (Donzelli Editore), 2002. 5. Andrew Rolle, The Italian Americans – Troubled Roots, p. 3. 3 was available. One needed to compare the American experience to what a fellow Italian could understand. So those who had been to America and returned to their native homelands necessarily used metaphors when relating their experiences to their paesani.6
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